China Loyalty Market Size & Forecast by Spend Value Across 100+ KPIs by Program Type, Channel Mix, Sector, Embedded Loyalty Penetration, and Platform Spend Segmentation - Databook Q2 2026 Update

The loyalty market in China is expected to grow by 15.4% annually, reaching US$68.57 billion by 2026.

The loyalty market in the country has experienced robust growth during 2021-2025, achieving a CAGR of 17.3%. This upward trajectory is expected to continue, with the market forecast to grow at a CAGR of 13.1% from 2026 to 2030. By the end of 2030, the loyalty market is projected to expand from its 2025 value of US$59.41 billion to approximately US$112.23 billion.

Key Trends and Drivers

E-commerce loyalty is shifting from discount campaigns to high-value membership retention

• China’s major e-commerce platforms are putting greater emphasis on paid and high-value membership programs rather than relying only on large shopping festivals. Alibaba reported that 88VIP members, its highest-spending consumer group, surpassed 59 million in the December quarter of 2025, with double-digit year-on-year growth. JD.com’s 2025 annual report also shows that JD Plus remains a premium paid membership program offering rebates, coupons, exclusive prices, free shipping and return services, lifestyle benefits, VIP services, and partner benefits such as Tencent Video and iQiyi.
• The shift is being driven by weaker incremental returns from broad discount events and the need to retain higher-value customers in a cautious consumption environment. China’s 2025 online retail sales still expanded, but consumers remained selective, while extended events such as 618 showed signs of lower daily spending intensity despite headline GMV growth. This is pushing platforms to use membership benefits, personalization, service privileges, and ecosystem partnerships to lock in repeat purchases.
• This trend is likely to intensify, but with more focus on measurable member economics. Platforms will keep expanding paid and tiered programs, but benefits will increasingly be tied to retention, basket expansion, merchant advertising, and cross-platform services rather than blanket subsidies. The winning programs will be those that combine price advantage with logistics, entertainment, lifestyle, and personalized shopping value.

Restaurant loyalty is becoming a core operating channel, not just a points layer

• Restaurant loyalty in China has intensified as large chains use apps, delivery channels, and membership databases to drive transactions. Yum China reported that total KFC and Pizza Hut membership exceeded 590 million in 2025, with active members exceeding 265 million. Member sales accounted for a major share of system sales, showing that loyalty programs are becoming central to ordering, delivery, promotions, and product testing.
• The key driver is the integration of loyalty with digital ordering and delivery. Yum China’s 2025 results show delivery sales growth and rising digital engagement, while China’s food-service market remains highly competitive and value-led. Loyalty apps allow restaurant operators to protect frequency, test price-point offers, push personalized coupons, and reduce dependence on third-party traffic.
• The trend will continue, but the market will likely move away from pure discount-led loyalty. China’s regulators have increased scrutiny of price wars and excessive platform subsidies in areas such as food delivery, which means loyalty programs will need to emphasize frequency, bundled meals, delivery convenience, member-only access, and personalized offers rather than simply funding deeper discounts.

Wallet-linked rewards are moving deeper into offline merchant engagement

• China’s digital wallet ecosystem is increasingly being used as loyalty infrastructure for offline merchants. Ant Group reported that Alipay Tap! users passed 100 million in 2025, positioning the service as a contactless payment and customer-engagement tool that can support membership and loyalty programs. This indicates a shift from loyalty being app-specific to loyalty being embedded at the payment and merchant-interaction layer.
• The driver is China’s mature mobile payment base and the need for merchants to convert payment traffic into repeat engagement. As online and offline retail competition becomes more fragmented, wallets can help merchants distribute coupons, run one-to-one promotions, connect mini-program journeys, and link payment behavior with membership benefits. China’s continued online retail growth and broad digital commerce adoption make wallet-linked loyalty particularly relevant for retailers, restaurants, local services, and travel merchants.
• This trend is likely to intensify, especially among merchants who do not want to build standalone loyalty apps. However, loyalty execution will become more compliance-sensitive because payment-linked personalization depends on consent, data governance, and transparent use of customer information. China’s 2025 personal information compliance audit rules make customer-data governance more important for loyalty platforms and merchants using wallet-based engagement.

Travel loyalty is recovering, but platforms and airlines face stronger compliance pressure

• Travel loyalty in China is recovering with domestic and outbound travel demand, but the recent change is that airlines and travel platforms are using loyalty programs more actively to capture repeat travel and higher-value customers. Air China’s 2025 annual report stated that PhoenixMiles members exceeded 100 million and that the group advanced the transformation of the PhoenixMiles frequent-flyer program. Trip.com Group also reported 2025 revenue growth across travel categories, supported by accommodation, transportation, packaged tours, and corporate travel recovery.
• The driver is the recovery of travel frequency and the need to defend customer relationships as booking journeys remain platform-led. Airlines are using frequent-flyer programs to improve direct engagement, while OTAs are using membership tiers, rewards, and travel credits to keep users inside their ecosystems. At the same time, China’s market regulator opened an investigation into Trip.com in January 2026 over suspected monopolistic practices, showing that large travel platforms will face closer scrutiny in how they manage merchants, traffic, and customer access.
• Travel loyalty should intensify, but growth will be more disciplined. Airlines are likely to improve member tiers, redemption options, and partner benefits, while OTAs will continue using membership to defend repeat bookings. However, regulatory scrutiny may limit aggressive exclusivity, traffic control, or opaque merchant practices, pushing travel loyalty toward clearer benefits, transparent pricing, and stronger direct-customer relationships.

Competitive Landscape

Competition is likely to intensify over the next 2-4 years, but with more discipline around subsidies, data governance, and platform conduct. China’s online retail sales continued to grow in 2025, supporting loyalty investment, but regulators are also scrutinizing price wars in food delivery and suspected platform dominance in travel. Personal information compliance audits effective from May 2025 will further push loyalty operators to strengthen consent, data-use controls, and personalization governance.

Current State of the Market

• China’s loyalty program market is highly competitive and increasingly platform-led. Competition is no longer limited to retailer points or airline miles; it is now shaped by e-commerce ecosystems, instant retail, digital wallets, food-service apps, hotel groups, and travel platforms. Alibaba’s August 2025 launch of a tiered Taobao loyalty program linking Taobao, Tmall, Ele.me, Fliggy, Amap, and 88VIP shows how competition is moving toward cross-platform engagement rather than single-brand rewards. JD.com remains active through JD Plus, while Alipay Tap! is extending wallet-linked customer engagement into offline merchant settings.

Key Players and New Entrants

• The key loyalty competitors include Alibaba through Taobao/Tmall, 88VIP, Ele.me and Fliggy; JD.com through JD Plus; Ant Group through Alipay-linked merchant engagement; Yum China through KFC and Pizza Hut memberships; H World through H Rewards; Air China through PhoenixMiles; and Trip.com through travel booking engagement. The market is not seeing many standalone coalition-loyalty entrants; instead, large platforms are converting existing traffic, payment relationships, and app frequency into loyalty ecosystems. H World’s 2025 results also reinforce the role of hotel groups, with loyalty-driven room nights becoming a competitive lever in domestic travel.

Recent Launches, Partnerships, Mergers, and Acquisitions

• The most important recent competitive development is Alibaba’s 2025 cross-platform loyalty upgrade, launched after the strategic merger of Ele.me and Fliggy into Alibaba’s China E-commerce Group. The program connects shopping, food delivery, ride-hailing and travel benefits, while high-tier users can access Fliggy F5 benefits and hotel-chain status links, including Marriott and Hilton references in Alibaba’s announcement. This raises the competitive bar for JD, Meituan, Trip.com, and offline retailers because loyalty is becoming a multi-service retention tool.

This report provides a detailed data-centric analysis of the loyalty industry in China, offering comprehensive coverage of loyalty schemes, loyalty platforms, program structures, and market dynamics. It covers more than 100 KPIs, including loyalty spend value, breakage rate, penetration rate, program segmentation, and channel-level adoption.

The report provides in-depth segmentation across the loyalty ecosystem, capturing loyalty spend value and breaking it down by core market dimensions. It classifies loyalty activity by program models (such as points, cashback, tiered, subscription, coalition, and gamified formats), membership structures, and execution channels (in-store, online, and mobile app), alongside embedded loyalty use cases integrated into payments, commerce, and platform ecosystems. The analysis further segments the market by industry verticals and assesses technology enablement, including AI-driven personalisation and emerging blockchain-led program mechanics. In addition, the dataset captures consumer demographics, enrolment pathways, and key program economics such as value accumulation, redemption, and breakage. Collectively, these datasets provide a comprehensive and quantifiable view of market size, structure, engagement behaviour, and value realisation dynamics within the loyalty market.

The research methodology is based on industry best practices. Its unbiased analysis leverages a proprietary analytics platform to offer a detailed view of emerging business and investment market opportunities.

Report Scope

This report provides a detailed data-centric analysis of the loyalty market in China, with comprehensive coverage across retail-sector context, loyalty spend dynamics, and loyalty platform economics. Below is a summary of key market segments:

China Retail Sector Market Context

• China Retail Industry Market Size, 2021-2030
• China Ecommerce Market Size, 2021-2030
• China POS Market Size Trend Analysis, 2021-2030

China Loyalty Spend Market Size and Growth Dynamics

• China Loyalty Spend Market Size and Future Growth Dynamics, 2021-2030
• China Loyalty Spend on Schemes by Value Accumulated and Value Redemption Rate, 2025
• China Loyalty Spend Share by Functional Domains, 2021-2030
• China Loyalty Spend by Loyalty Schemes, 2021-2030
• China Loyalty Spend by Loyalty Platforms, 2021-2030

China Loyalty Schemes Spend Segmentation by Loyalty Program Type

• Point-based Loyalty Program
• Tiered Loyalty Program
• Mission-driven Loyalty Program
• Spend-based Loyalty Program
• Gaming Loyalty Program
• Free Perks Loyalty Program
• Subscription Loyalty Program
• Community Loyalty Program
• Refer a Friend Loyalty Program
• Paid Loyalty Program
• Cashback Loyalty Program

China Loyalty Schemes Spend Segmentation by Channel

• In-Store
• Online
• Mobile

China Loyalty Schemes Spend Segmentation by Business Model

• Seller Driven
• Payment Instrument Driven
• Other Segment

China Loyalty Schemes Spend Segmentation by Key Sectors

• Retail
• Financial Services
• Healthcare & Wellness
• Restaurants & Food Delivery
• Travel & Hospitality (Cabs, Hotels, Airlines)
• Telecoms
• Media & Entertainment
• Other

Sector × Channel Views: Loyalty Schemes Spend by Key Sectors and Channels

• Online Loyalty Spend by Sector, 2021-2030
• In-store Loyalty Spend by Sector, 2021-2030
• Mobile App Loyalty Spend by Sector, 2021-2030

China Retail Sector Deep-Dive: Loyalty Schemes Spend by Retail Segment

• Diversified Retailers
• Department Stores
• Specialty Stores
• Supermarket and Convenience Store
• Other

China Loyalty Schemes Spend Segmentation by Accessibility

• Card Based Access
• Digital Access

China Loyalty Schemes Spend Segmentation by Consumer Type

• B2B Consumers
• B2C Consumers

China Loyalty Schemes Spend Segmentation by Membership Type

• Free
• Free + Premium
• Premium

China Loyalty Spend Split by Embedded vs. Non-Embedded Loyalty

• Embedded Loyalty Programs
• Non-Embedded Loyalty Programs

China Loyalty Spend Split by Use of AI / Blockchain

• AI Driven Loyalty Program
• Blockchain Driven Loyalty Program

China Loyalty Platform Spend Segmentation by Software Use Case

• Analytics and AI Driven
• Management Platform

China Loyalty Platform Spend Segmentation by Vendor / Solution Partner

• In-house
• Third-Party Vendor

China Loyalty Platform Spend Segmentation by Deployment

• Cloud
• On-Premise

China Loyalty Platform Spend Segmentation by Offering

• Software
• Services
• Custom Built Platform vs. Off the Shelf Platform

China Consumer Demographics & Behaviour (Loyalty Spend Share), 2025

• Age Group
• Income Level
• Gender

China Loyalty Program KPIs, Behavioral Metrics & Embedded, 2025

• Loyalty Program Penetration (% of Retail Sales under Loyalty)
• Primary Loyalty Motivation Split Analysis
• Loyalty Program Breakage Rate Analysis
• Loyalty Program Enrollment Channel Mix Analysis
• Embedded Loyalty Penetration by Channel

Reasons to Buy

• Comprehensive Loyalty Market Intelligence: Gain a complete view of the loyalty market by quantifying total loyalty spend value and its composition across loyalty schemes and loyalty platforms. The databook also includes retail context indicators to help benchmark market scale, structure, maturity, and growth dynamics. This enables users to understand not only the size of the opportunity, but also how loyalty value is distributed across the broader ecosystem.
• Granular Loyalty Spend and Program Type Coverage: Analyze loyalty spend across a wide range of loyalty schemes and platform-led models, supported by structured segmentation across key program types. Coverage includes point-based, tiered, cashback, subscription, community, gaming, mission-driven, paid, and referral-led formats. This helps identify which loyalty models are gaining traction and how program structures are evolving across markets.
• Channel, Sector, and Execution-Level Insights: Evaluate how loyalty spend is distributed across in-store, online, and mobile channels, with further visibility across major sectors such as Retail, Financial Services, Healthcare & Wellness, Restaurants & Food Delivery, Travel & Hospitality, Telecoms, and Media & Entertainment. Dedicated sector × channel views help users compare execution models and assess where loyalty engagement is strongest across physical, digital, and mobile environments.
• Program Structure, Participation, and Embedded Loyalty Analysis: Understand how loyalty schemes differ by business model, accessibility, consumer type, and membership format. The dataset covers seller-driven vs. payment-instrument-driven models, card-based vs. digital programs, B2B vs. B2C participation, and free, premium, and free+premium membership types. It also tracks embedded vs. non-embedded loyalty and emerging mechanisms, including AI-driven and blockchain-driven loyalty spend where captured.
• Loyalty Platform Spend and Vendor Benchmarking: Benchmark loyalty platform economics across software use cases, partner models, deployment choices, and offering mix. Coverage includes analytics/AI-driven platforms, loyalty management platforms, in-house vs. third-party solutions, cloud vs. on-premise deployment, and software vs. services models. The dataset also supports comparison of custom-built and off-the-shelf loyalty platform approaches.
• Consumer, KPI, and Decision-Ready Databook Lens: Access loyalty spend share by age, income, and gender, alongside decision-critical program KPIs such as loyalty penetration, primary motivation split, breakage rate, enrollment channel mix, and embedded loyalty penetration by channel. With historical and forecast coverage through 2030 and 100+ KPIs, the databook is designed for direct use in market models, strategic planning, competitive benchmarking, and executive presentations.